«No. The question now is: What do we do?»
«I think we ought to cut them down and hide them,» he said promptly. «Put them under a pile of stuff people won’t want-dog food, dish detergent, stuff like that. If this gets out, it will only make things worse. That’s why I came to you, David. I felt you are the only one I could really trust.
I muttered, «It’s like the Nazi war criminals killing themselves in their cells after the war was lost.»
«Yeah. I had the same thought.»
We fell silent, and suddenly those soft shuffling noises began outside the steel loading door again-the sound of the tentacles feeling softly across it. We drew together. My flesh was crawling.
«Okay,» I said.
«We’ll make it as quick as we can,» Ollie said. His sapphire ring glowed mutely as he moved his flashlight. «I want to get out of here fast.»
I looked up at the ropes. They had used the same sort of clothesline the man in the golf cap had allowed me to tic around his waist. The nooses had sunk into the puffed flesh of their necks, and I wondered again what it could have been to make both of them go through with it. I knew what Ollie meant by saying that if the news of the double suicide got out, it would make things worse. For me it already had-and I wouldn’t have believed that possible.
There was a snicking sound. Ollie had opened his knife, a good heavy job made for slitting open cartons. And, of course, cutting rope.
«You or me?» he asked.
I swallowed. «One each.»
We did it.
When I got back, Amanda was gone and Mrs. Turman was with Billy. They were both sleeping. I walked down one of the aisles and a voice said: «Mr. Drayton. David.» It was Amanda, standing by the stairs to the manager’s office, her eyes like emeralds. «What was it?»
«Nothing,» I said.
She came over to me. I could smell faint perfume. And oh how I wanted her. «You liar,» she said.
«It was nothing. A false alarm.»
«If that’s bow you want it.» She took my hand. «I’ve just been up to the office. It’s empty and there’s a lock on the door.» Her face was perfectly calm, but her eyes were lambent, almost feral, and a pulse beat steadily in her throat.
«I don’t-»
«I saw the way you looked at me,» she said. «If we need to talk about it, it’s no good. The Turman woman is with your son.
«Yes.» It came to me that this was a way — maybe not the best one, but a way, nevertheless-to take the curse off what Ollie and I had just done. Not the best way, just the only way.
We went up the narrow flight of stairs and into the office. It was empty, as she had said. And there was a lock on the door. I turned it. In the darkness she was nothing but a shape. I put my arms out, touched her, and pulled her to me. She was trembling. We went down on the floor, first kneeling, kissing, and I cupped one firm breast and could feel the quick thudding of her heart through her sweatshirt. I thought of Steffy telling Billy not to touch the live wires. I thought of the bruise that had been on her hip when she took off the brown dress on our wedding night. I thought of the first time I had seen her, biking across the mall of the University of Maine at Orono, me bound for one of Vincent Hartgen’s classes with my portfolio under my arm. And my erection was enormous.
We lay down then, and she said, «Love me, David. Make me warm.» When she came, she dug into my back with her nails and called me by a name that wasn’t mine. I didn’t mind. It made us about even.
When we came down, some sort of creeping dawn had begun. The blackness outside the loopholes went reluctantly to dull gray, then to chrome, then to the bright, featureless, and unsparkling white of a drive-in movie screen. Mike Hatlen was asleep in a folding chair he had scrounged somewhere. Dan Miller sat on the floor a little distance away, eating a Hostess donut. The kind that’s powdered with white sugar.